The Confession Club Page 10

  “Better,” Iris says.

  “He’s Irish, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Good on you both,” Maddy says. Then, standing, “I’m beat. I’m going in. You coming?”

  “I’ll stay out for just a bit more,” Iris says.

  Through the screen door, she hears Maddy rinse out her glass in the kitchen, hears her ascend the stairs. She knows Maddy will tiptoe in and stare at Nola sleeping, as she does every night before she goes to bed. Iris does it sometimes, too. She didn’t get a child of her own, no, but what a gift to have one living here now. She hopes when Maddy finally gets around to asking Matthew if he’ll move back, he’ll agree. If he doesn’t…

  She finishes the last of the wine in her glass and thinks of John’s parting words to her tonight. They made love, they went to dinner at a small restaurant he’d found the next town over, Hidey’s Hole, the best brisket Iris ever tasted. Then they came back to the farm and they lay again on his bed made of hay. As he watched her dress to leave, John said, “Your back reminds me of a swan.” He sighed. “Oh, Iris. Bad news. Bad news. I think I am in love with you.”

  She walked over to him and sat down. “Bad news indeed.”

  “A veritable disaster,” he said.

  “Nothing could be worse,” she said. “What will we do?”

  He studied her face, ran his fingers so lightly up her arm she shivered. “We’ll see,” he said.

  Rules of the Club

  “Well, I haven’t had macaroni salad like that for years,” Toots says. “So much mayonnaise! I forgot how good real mayonnaise is.”

  Confession Club is at Rosemary’s house tonight, and she chose the theme of a picnic dinner: cold fried chicken, macaroni salad, pickled beets, three-bean salad, and a coconut cake with lemon curd filling. She has Bird Calls of the Great Midwest on her CD player. At the center of the table, a beautiful vintage wicker hamper is filled with flowers, and Rosemary even scattered some plastic ants—quite realistic-looking!—on the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth.

  “Ew!” Gretchen said, when she first saw the ants. She stopped short, causing Dodie, who was following closely behind her, to spill some of the contents of her plate. Luckily it was just a drumstick.

  “I’ll clean that up,” Rosemary said at the same time that Dodie said, “Oh, shit. I’ll get that. Damn it!”

  “I’ll clean the rug,” Rosemary said. “You put two dollars in the jar, Dodie.”

  Joanie claps her hands. “Great! We should have enough for the library to buy another book. We need to amp up our swearing; they want to buy some art books.”

  Now they have finished their dinner and moved on to a rosé that Rosemary says the clerk at County Line liquors couldn’t stop raving about. “He said it had fine character,” she says. “As if he were providing a job reference! ‘Perfect maceration,’ he said, which, what does that even mean? And then he said”—and here she makes her voice nasal and superior—“ ‘The taste is an off-dry strawberry, with notes of vanilla and…’ Wait. It was so odd. Oh, I remember! ‘Forest floor.’ Forest floor—can you imagine?”

  “It is awfully good,” Toots says. “But what really tastes good is that extra load of mayonnaise you put in the macaroni salad.”

  “It wasn’t so much mayonnaise as it was real mayonnaise,” Rosemary says. “None of that light mayo for me anymore, it tastes like…Well, it tastes like nothing.”

  “Amen,” says Toots. “Every time I eat it I try to convince myself that it’s more or less the same thing, but it’s not. Something really important is missing. I eat a turkey sandwich with that light mayonnaise and I just stare out the window afterward.”

  “Exactly,” says Rosemary. “I’ve had it with the light stuff. I’m back to real across the board.”

  “Me, too,” says Dodie. “Plus you should start smoking again.”

  “Why?” Rosemary asks.

  Dodie shrugs. “Probably be dead before it killed you this time. At our age, we get a new lease on bad habits.”

  “Can I get the recipe for that macaroni salad?” Joanie asks.

  “Sure,” Rosemary says. “It’s my mother’s. I don’t make it often, because whenever I see her writing on the little card—you know how they used to have those cute little index cards with pictures of potholders and such? Such jaunty little potholders on her recipe cards, as if they couldn’t be more pleased with themselves for being potholders. And ‘From the kitchen of’ in such pretty script. But every time I pull out one of her recipe cards, I feel guilty for how mean I was to her.”

  “We’re all mean to our mothers,” Gretchen says. “It’s a daughter’s duty.”

  “No it isn’t,” says Rosemary.

  “Well, we all do it,” Gretchen says. “I don’t know why we do it, but we do.”

  “We have to separate,” says Joanie. “We have to push our mothers away so we can be our authentic selves. We have to be mean.”

  “For all of our lives?” Rosemary says.

  “You did it all your life?” Karen asks.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Rosemary says. “I’m not the one confessing tonight. Who is?”

  Gretchen holds up her hand.

  “Okay, go,” Rosemary says.

  Gretchen clears her throat. “Okay. So, this is…Well, before my confession, I think I want to say something I’m ashamed of first. Which is that a couple of times a week I go into my closet and cry.”

  No one says anything.

  “It’s so Jerry won’t hear me,” Gretchen says.

  “Why shouldn’t he hear you?” asks Joanie. “Why don’t you tell him what’s wrong?”

  “Well, that’s the confession part. It’s about my sons. Who are his sons, too, of course. But the confession is that I wish I could…well, I wish I could divorce my sons. Both of them. You talk about mean daughters. But sons can give it out just as bad as any daughter. Last Christmas one of the gifts from my older son was deodorant. Deodorant! A three-pack—that’s what was special about it; it was meant to be this great convenience. My other gift from him was an orange mohair sweater so heinous the cat ran away when he saw it. And: I hate to sound like a cliché, but they never call. I always have to be the one to check in. I check in, and do you think at any point they say, ‘And how are you, Mom?’ No. And when I invite them and their snippy wives over to dinner, maybe twice a year, they act like I’m asking them to donate an organ. They will never fill in for me at the store when I have an emergency. No. I have to pay someone overtime because they can’t be bothered to pitch in to a business that will someday be theirs. And their children! Such darling babies and toddlers, but now they positively ransack my house. Nothing off limits! Their parents sit there doing absolutely nothing when they go into my desk drawers. And when the children break things, not a word then, either; they don’t want to shame them. What’s wrong with a little shame? What’s wrong with a little responsibility?

  “I don’t understand it. It’s not how I raised them. I raised them to be polite, to be empathic, to give to others, to take responsibility. And I’ll tell you, I have had enough. I don’t care if I see them anymore. I don’t want to see them anymore! I don’t! Oh, it’s a terrible thing to say, I know. It’s a terrible thing to feel! But I just…well, I would rather just get my fill of children—I do love children, you know—I would rather get my fill of children by babysitting for someone else or volunteering at a daycare center or something. I mean it. I want to divorce my children.”

  “Divorce them, then,” Dodie says.

  Gretchen rolls her eyes. “Right.”

  “I mean it,” Dodie says. “Divorce them, but don’t tell them. I did that with Ralph, may he continue to rest in peace and be there waiting for me with a big fat gin and tonic when I join him. I divorced Ralph for an entire year, and he didn’t know a thing about it. For hi
m, nothing really changed. But for me! Why, I felt like I’d won a trip to Paris. I felt so carefree! He’d do one of his rude or annoying things and it would just roll off me. ‘What a jerk,’ I’d think, in a kind of removed way. ‘I sure am glad I divorced him.’

  “You see, once I did that, got my psychic divorce, I didn’t have to take on anything of his. In my mind, we weren’t a couple any longer. He had his ways, I had mine. Oh, we did things together, still. And I was glad he was there on those stormy nights when the thunder booms so loud it scares the bejesus—”

  “Whoops! jar!” Joanie says, and Dodie sighs and looks over at her.

  “We don’t count ‘bejesus.’ We talked about that not too long ago, remember? We don’t count ‘bejesus’ or ‘crap.’ ”

  Joanie only sips her wine, and Dodie continues.

  “Anyway, those times you get scared in the night or you need a jar opened or the car backed out of the garage, well, you have the convenience of having your husband around even if he secretly isn’t your husband anymore. Let me tell you, girls, there’s nothing like divorcing your husband to make you get along with him.” She sits back in her chair, crosses her arms. “So, Gretchen, listen to me. Divorce your children in your mind, and then just go about living your life. Forget about them, and just see how quickly they sense you’re not there for them. They’ll be all over you in no time. And you know what? When they come back the first time and ask you to do something for them, you say no. Say no! You always say yes to those boys, no matter what they ask. Why, I remember when you had tickets to see Oklahoma! at the playhouse four months in advance and the day of the play one of your sons asked you to babysit and what did you do? Skipped the play!”

  “I know,” Gretchen says. “And I love Ado Annie so much. That’s the role I wanted when we did the play in high school—remember, Joanie? I wanted it way more than Laurey.”

  “They had to make you Laurey because you were the prettiest,” Joanie says.

  “I know,” Gretchen says, and sighs. She pushes back the sides of her long red hair.

  Dodie coughs, then says in a high, pinched voice, “You didn’t even ask your kids if they could reschedule!” She coughs again, clears her throat. “Excuse me. But remember, Gretchen? You didn’t even ask them.”

  “I didn’t. You’re right.”

  Dodie shakes her head. “I swear, sometimes I think you’re afraid of your kids.”

  “I am!”

  “Oh, my,” Toots says. “Let’s all bond together over this one. Let’s be united in strength and tell Gretchen she can divorce her children. No contact until they call her! Agreed?”

  Iris says, “Well, I think Gretchen is the one who has to make the decision.”

  “I will make it!” Gretchen says, and all the women join hands.

  Gretchen straightens in her chair. Closes her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “I’m doing it. Right here, right now, I divorce my children.” She sits back in her chair, a bit stunned-looking, then smiles. “My goodness! I feel better already. It’s like someone undid a buckle in my chest.” Then she looks a bit worried. “But no one can ever tell anyone I did such a thing.”

  “Rules of the club,” Toots says. “But you know what? I’ll bet you’re not the first to divorce your children.”

  “I can vouch for that,” says Karen. “Not divorced, but abandoned. A little bit. For a little while.”

  “Did you abandon your children?” Gretchen asks, a little worried. Karen’s oldest is only nine.

  “No,” says Karen. “Not me. Someone else.”

  “Someone in your husband’s congregation?”

  “Never mind,” Karen says quickly. “I’m just saying that right when you think you’re a horrible person for saying or doing something, you find out you’re not alone.”

  “It is a comfort,” Gretchen says. “Unless, you know, you’re a mass murderer or something. Is there any more wine? To go with my whining?”

  “You’re not whining!” all the women say together, and Gretchen says, “Gosh, you guys. Thank you.”

  Experiments

  On Saturday morning, Nola comes into the kitchen, letting the screen door bang shut behind her, and Iris quickly checks to make sure the chocolate soufflé in the oven—the sample cake for her class later this morning—hasn’t fallen. No, thank heavens. “Big news!” Nola says.

  “Oh?” asks Maddy, who is sitting at the kitchen table reviewing a stack of old black-and-white photos she found at Time and Again, the basement thrift shop at St. Ignatius Church. They are inspiring her to go in a different direction with her own work. She told Iris she wants to focus on this small town and the people in it, as this unknown artist did, and that she has a lot of ideas about things she has seen that she would like to capture: Chairs on porches angled toward each other as though they are engaged in conversation. The line out the door of Sugarbutter at four-thirty in the afternoon, when they offer 75 percent off on what they haven’t sold. The old man who walks down the block every morning with his hands clasped behind his back, a pack of four unleashed dachshunds following him. The loners on the elementary school playground who watch the others play—last week, Maddy told Iris, she saw a solemn little girl hiding in the bushes to watch, and had thought, That was me. She said she wished Iris had gotten a photo of Nola and Link splashing in the puddles that day they played in the rain.

  Nola sits down on a kitchen chair turned backward, her chin resting on the top rail. This is new. She calls it “cowgirly.” She wants to eat her meals this way, too, but Maddy forbids it.

  “You might not believe this, but it’s true,” Nola says. “Link has found the formula to make a mummy.”

  Iris takes off her apron and sits at the table. “Do tell.”

  Nola looks at her. “What?”

  “Tell us!”

  “Okay. So, what you do first is you get a dead thing. We used a goldfish from Link’s friend. The fish died yesterday. Link was in Kenny’s room and the fish was fine and then Kenny looked over and—bang!—the fish was floating upside down. And Kenny was all sad and crying and then Link said, ‘But what if his death would contribute to a great scientific experiment—would you feel better then?’ And his friend said no, but he said that Link could have the fish because he was only going to flush him, anyway. Fucillius, his name was, which I didn’t even know that was a name. But Kenny gave the fish to Link and now we are finally going to make a mummy. That was our favorite experiment that we wanted to do.” She looks at Iris. “Do we have any of those gingersnaps left?”

  For a second, Iris thinks she means to use them to mummify something, then realizes the child just wants a cookie. “Okay?” Iris asks Maddy, and Maddy nods and says, “I’d like one, too,” and Iris gets out three plates and three glasses and the carton of milk. She puts the cookie jar in the center of the table and peers in. “Two each,” she says, and divides them.

  “So how do you make a mummy?” she asks Nola.

  Nola squints at her. “You might not like to eat at this next part because it is about you have to scrape all the fish’s guts out. We had to use a grapefruit spoon, which, if you don’t know, has these really sharp edges.”

  Iris pauses, but continues eating. Maddy, too. “Go ahead,” she tells her daughter.

  “You get all the guts out, and then you put a whole bunch of baking soda inside the fish, you push it in really tight. And then you put baking soda in the bottom of a container and lay the fish on top of it, and you put baking soda over him, too. And then you put the container away for a week.” She bites into her second cookie and pours herself more milk.

  Iris and Maddy sit silent, waiting. “And?” Iris finally says.

  Nola waves her cookie. “And then we’ll see. Because we just did that part, we put the container in his closet. But Link said in a week we’ll take him out and put in more baking soda and then we
wait another week and then he is supposed to be a mummy. See, the baking soda sucks up all his body’s juices and he gets kind of leathery and that’s what makes a mummy. Ta-da!”

  “Nola, did you wash your hands after all this?” Maddy asks.

  She sniffs her fingers delicately. “I think so. But don’t worry—I didn’t even help that much. I’m just the assistant. Next we are going to learn about crytojinctis.”

  “Cryogenics?” Iris asks.

  “Oh. Right.” She pushes herself back from the table. “Welp, I’m going up to read my book.”

  “Done playing with Link?” Maddy asks.

  Nola turns around, smiling. “Ho! I would hang with him all day. But he is done with me for today. I’m too young for him anyway. Can I have one more cookie?” She holds up an index finger to emphasize the meagerness of her request.

  “The cookies are all gone.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She skips away.

  Maddy watches her go. “I want to be like her when I grow up.”

  “Me, too,” Iris says.

  Maddy gets up to help clear the table. “Where’s John lately?” she asks, her tone careful.

  Iris shrugs. “Don’t know. I tried calling him yesterday, but I don’t think he charges his phone very regularly. Maybe I’ll drive out to the farmhouse after class.”

  “And maybe I’ll tell Matthew that Nola is starting summer school.”

  “Big doings in Mason,” Iris says. “We might end up in the paper.”

  Maddy sits back down at the table. “Iris, have you talked to Abby lately?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know. All these experiments Link is doing. I wonder if his mom’s okay. I just keep thinking of how she almost died from leukemia. I wonder if she’s had a recurrence.”

  Iris had started to reach into the cupboard for the flowered cake plates she wants to use for class. Now she turns to face Maddy.

  “I mean, she’s probably fine,” Maddy says.